what I wanted is a nomultilib system with the single exception for skype (since it's statically linked against libc, there aren't many packages needed). now gcc has been recompiled with nomultilib and running skype reports it isn't an executable. ldd skype reports the same. only less claims it's a program. any possibility to restore how it was before? what's the emerge-command for re-installing the dependencies?

Back on Windows I investigated this with internal tools and traces revealed it was due to hidden Flash-based advertisements in Skype in that case; the same might be happening here, the poll / recv / time loop might be checking whether to load the next advertisement.

Back on Windows I investigated this with internal tools and traces revealed it was due to hidden Flash-based advertisements in Skype in that case; the same might be happening here, the poll / recv / time loop might be checking whether to load the next advertisement.

Does the Linux version have ads? I don't see any. Are you speculating that this infrastructure is in the Linux version, and causing wakeups?_________________Personal overlay | Simple backup scheme

No idea, these are merely speculations based on what I saw; I was blocking ad domains in a hosts file on our router, hence it being unable to load the advertisement and I saw a Flash process or thread spin up and a trace using Sysinternals Tools confirmed the Flash thread was trying to contact the domain. Here on Linux looking at its dynamic linking dependencies it doesn't appear to use Flash it on first sight, it could still possibly be packed in the binary but as far as I know I am not permitted to reverse engineer the binary. This weekend, I'll give it a spin and see what I can do that is acceptable per license...

I'm running skype-4.2.0.11 now. Ever since about 4.0.3 skype won't run unless I completely remove the ~/.Skype directory first. Then I enter my credentials and it runs fine until I close the program. But then when I run it again, it terminates with no message and nothing in .xsession-errors. I ran it under strace but didn't see anything striking. This is the end of what strace produces: